avr programmer

I want to start learning avr.. so bought this development board from a local store. i cant get it to work in avrdude. help?
By the way i'm using usb to serial cable to connect to this board.
Does the bootloader has to be burnt for this to work?
Thanks in advance :)

Hi to all, I'm quite new to AVR MCUs and I have the chips (ATmega32 16PU), but no programmer.

I'm obsessed by the word "universal", because I don't wanna buy a programmer every time I'm working with a different chip, so the question is: which is the really universal ISP for AVRs, possibly with USB connector?